Finding Your Own Voice

This summer, I was forced to confront the reality that one of my kids didn't like summer camp. When I was young, I lived for going to camp every summer. I continued to work there as a college student and eventually worked there professionally after I was married and even when I had 3 kids. For a variety of reasons, I left my job there and moved on to other things, although it was a hard decision to make, and now each summer, I miss it and am jealous of all of my friends, and even my father, who still get to go.

I cannot imagine what a kid would not like about summer camp, so each summer, I continued to cajole and bribe my youngest to go. Don't you want to be with your siblings, I'd ask? I'll buy an ipod touch, I said. Everyone really wants to see you, I added. She went for a few summers, stayed home for one very long summer, and went back.

This summer, she went, but after two weeks we brought her home. It was very surreal to be on the other side of the phone call as a parent and hearing that camp just wasn't the right place for her to be right now. She was very unhappy and both my husband and I knew that we needed to bring her home.

Looking back now with a few months perspective, it was the best thing we could have done for her, and for all of us. It reminded me that no matter how we try to box our children in, they will break out eventually into their own people. We don't do it on purpose, we do what we think is right for them, what will help them grow. The experiences we trust are the ones that we ourselves had, pushing on them the successful ones and trying to help them avoid our own failures. As a mother, it is sometimes hard to separate ourselves from them, to remember they are individuals. Each year as they grow, the virtual umbilical cord becomes longer and longer while we, the parents, only really want to keep pulling them back. We know it's futile and we fight our impulse, but we aren't always successful.

The truth is that we just wanted to help her find her way, coming to the understanding that her way was not necessarily ours. In fact, it allowed her to come to terms with some things that will help her to move forward in her life.

I continue to learn from each of my children how to parent them as they develop into individuals and young adults. I enjoy watching them find their own voice. I also enjoy embarrassing them as only parents of teenagers can. That way, they know I haven't lost my individual voice along the way, and neither, I hope will they.

Fifty and More than Fine

Today is my sister's 50th Birthday. I don't think she would mind my telling you that, she's been hash tagging about it for a while now.

It is a tradition in our family to write a song or poem for special occasions and since, unfortunately, I won't be there to help her celebrate in person, I herewith submit my song/poem in honor of her special day.
Sgt. Peppers

It was 50 years ago today, Kim was born in a natural way
She never goes out of style
and she's guaranteed to walk a mile
so may I introduce to you
the one and only oldest who....
Our fifty year old sister Kimberly Anne....

[instrumental interlude]

Our oldest sister the awesome Kimberly Anne
We hope you will enjoy the snow
Born in Kentucky's own heartland
On her birthday we want you to know...

Stuart, Seth and Jeremy, Andrew Frankenthal
Long Knife, Dunvegan, Louisville and All
You're wonderful, we love you
it's certainly a thrill
you're house is always home to us
we wish you happy birthday
and many more to come!

I don't really want to stop this song
but we thought you might  like to know
that your aunts are gonna sing a song
and we thought you might sing along

so let me introduce to you
the one and only Kimberly Anne
Happy 50th birthday Kimberly Anne

[instrumental interlude]

My duty's done my song is almost through
I'm sorry I can't be with you

We're singing all your praises
eating all your food
rooting for the Packers
wanting all your shoes
Best daughter, mother, sister, wife in the laaaaaaaand

Happy Birthday once again
Kim Gordon's one and only WGN radio band
we're getting very near the end

You're 50 and you're fabulous
You're feeling more than fine
Our super one and only
Kimbeeeerly Annnnnnnnnne!

Birfurcation or can you have your Barbie, 50 Shades and Feminism too?

Bifurcation means the splitting of a main body into two parts. Think of it as a fork. Like a fork in the road. Not like the fork that my youngest never eats with.

I'm just going to come out and admit it. I have tickets to see the 50 Shades of Grey movie tonight. I have read the books, even reread them. I'll continue; I love Barbies and I have some "designer" ones in my house. 

Those of you who know me would probably be comfortable calling me a feminist and I am completely comfortable with being called that. But I am also a realistic feminist and a realistic person and therefore, I bifurcate. I am two people at the same time. I am sometimes more one and more the other. When I am both or only one, I make my own choices.

On Facebook this week and on Twitter, where I follow feminist leaning pages and people and magazines, there is a bit of a trend in using 50 Shades as a sound off for violence against women and even $50 for 50 Shades, meaning don't see the movie, give $50 bucks to some worthy charity instead. 

You see, this bothers my bifurcated self. What is wrong with a book that allows women, and lots of them apparently, to fantasize about sex and to get aroused? Does it really matter if it's well written? Have you ever watched a porn movie (geared towards men of course because they all are) for the plot? Or read Playboy for the articles. Be honest.

Ah, but that is the guys, this is women. Women should repress their sexuality or at least not bring up in public what turns them on. C'mon, how disingenuous can society be? Every movie in Hollywood made by a man objectifies women. All the Meghan Trainors and Melissa McCarthys and Plus Size models in SI aren't going to change that. (just as an aside, plus size bikini models are not progress, progress is the cancelling of the SI swimsuit issue, period.) Have you seen Game of Thrones? 

Let's talk about violence though. Is Christian Grey a stalker? Is he a control freak? Yes, he sort of is, but give us women some credit that we can tell fiction from reality. 

At the Thanksgiving table this year, there was alot of talk about the NFL and domestic violence. What should they do about it? I pissed my dad off by saying if they really wanted to do something about it then anyone charged or investigated for domestic violence charges should be banned from playing in the NFL. It's not that simple, Hillary, they said. Oh, yes, it is. 

And did you notice that during the Super Bowl, with that great pizza commercial everyone loved, there were no pictures of women who suffered from domestic violence. Put their beaten to a pulp faces on the screen, put their orphaned children, put their homeless families. I mean you can scare people about accidents in the home with a dead kid but not about this? Did they even post a hotline # for help if you need it? Nope, just a website to take a pledge, how white of them.

Do I even need to mention the amount of violence against women in video games? This is what impresses men of our generation. These aren't guys that are cracking open 50 Shades of Grey. 

What goes on between two consenting adults is their business. Whether they tie each other up, enjoy anal sex, are the same sex or whether there are more than two in the room. or even if, God forbid, the just really like the missionary position. I've read some stuff on the internet that is not fiction that I can honestly say these people are fucked up. I mean bizarro, really waaaaay out of the box.  

There are so many real problems in the world that need real attention and real solutions, not the least of is the real state of women in so many places. Speak out on Facebook and Twitter about that. Genital mutilation, child brides, rape, no voting rights, domestic violence, hell even the lack of a female viagra, pay equality. What is $50? Did you know in the USA, women have to work 14 months to make the same amount as men in 12 months? 

I am woman, hear me roar. Or hear me moan. Or come see my Barbies. Or see me in my egalitarian synagogue. Or see me read 50 Shades. Or see me read the Goldfinch (I'm also a very deep thinker..)

Don't be slut shamed because 50 Shades may turn you on. Embrace your inner goddess. 

I really love my birthday - NSFW or young children

December 23, tomorrow is my birthday. I have always loved my birthday and felt everyone else should love it too. My maternal grandfather, my grandaddy (whom I wrote about here) had his birthday a week before mine on December 16. He was my birthday buddy. This infatuation with my birthday may have to do with being a middle child or maybe it's the Hanukkah/Christmas syndrome of getting lost in the shuffle. Or maybe I just like my birthday, ok?

This will be my 46th birthday. I am now on the upper side of 40, closer to 50 than 40. I feel good, I'm okay with my age and feel as though I am in a very good place.

I have been ruminating on some subjects lately so I thought, in honor of my birthday (see how much I love it, I've already mentioned it a million times), I would share these thoughts.

While watching the miniseries the Red Tent (don't bother), there was a love scene where oral sex was performed on a woman. Suddenly, I realized that this is now commonplace on tv. A woman receiving oral sex is almost a standard of sex scenes.  Now mind you this was Lifetime, so it was definitely more than I was expecting. Did I mention I was watching it with my 13 year old daughter? I must add here because she would if she were writing this she would make me, that yes, I let her watch Ted but only if I watched it with her. That evens itself out, right? Ok, I also let her watch Outlander which includes oral sex scenes, gender balanced since both main characters are on the receiving end.  But that was on Starz and this was on Lifetime. In the same scene, you see the man on top, they are obviously naked and doing it (that is the scientific term) and his butt is modestly draped. So far, so good. But then he starts to move as if he is actually having sex with her. Lifetime, really? He had a hot body so throw us a bone (ha ha, excuse the pun) and show his butt, I mean what difference does it make at this point?

My God, next thing you know Linus will be going down on Sally and you know what? She's gonna fucking enjoy it. In fact, she is going to initiate it. Go Girl!

Everyone always gets embarrassed when I bring this up but when I was initially reading up on the HPV vaccine, I saw an article that said you should get the vaccine for your sons as well as your daughters. Why? Because women these days are much more voluble about their sexual needs and so men, in consequence are going downtown more. Since it is now part of pop culture, it must be a thing.

Which brings me to my next subject, rimming. or as Nicki Minaj would say "he tossed my salad like his name's Romaine". If you don't know what this is, let me enlighten you. It's running your tongue around someone's asshole. Apparently that's a thing as celebrities have posted their support of it on instagram. And of course, it's a trend on television shows. No more delegated to the bedroom of gay men, even a DJ got a "rim job" as it's called, in exchange for concert tickets and a large dose of E Coli.

My 13 year old daughter can rap that Nicki Minaj song like its nobody's business. Just like she and her sister used to sing the head round when you go down song when they were not so far out of diapers. Maybe that is where it all started with that song. I've been told, again by my 13 year old daughter that she knows songs with much more explicit lyrics.

I try and have open and honest conversations with my children about sex. Some people might say too open and honest. But I don't think we have a choice anymore. You either explain it all correctly and in a real context (as opposed to one they will, no doubt, see on tv) or let them be taught how it goes by their friends and the entertainment industry. I have told them all that sex is better in a committed relationship, that women too deserve and desire pleasure and that they need to be smart and safe. Yes, my son knows that no means no and I warn my daughters about putting themselves in iffy situations. We've told them that we don't care if they're gay as long as they're happy.

Only the future will know if I've ruined them or saved them. But as the old joke about the guy who dies of a heart attack during sex goes "at least he died happy."

Fury: The Update

Hello again.  Since I wrote this blog post, two things of note have happened. One doesn't really matter and the other does. The first one is that I thought Brad Pitt retweeted my post. But it wasn't really him. The second is that my Mimi fainted and fell or fell and fainted.  Luckily, she didn't break anything which is not a good thing to do at her age.  They thought perhaps she had had a stroke (she didn't) but turns out  she has just lost her ability to balance well. She is coming out of the hospital tomorrow and will go to rehab for a week and then back to her place. She will have to use a walker now, not just the cane.  She may want to cut down on her glass(es) of wine but maybe not.
Thursday is her 88th birthday, so Happy Birthday Mimi, we love you very much!

If you read her comment on facebook then you know she had some things to tell me. Here is what they are:

1. Grandaddy's boxing name was Jerry Miller
2. They were married for 44 years (I suck at math)
3.  She wanted me to share this with you as well:

My Great Great Grandmother was paralyzed when she fell out of the window trying to clean her house for Shabbat because her in laws were coming over (insert snarky comment here about they not liking her and nothing was ever good enough.)  She was also pregnant at the time. My grandfather was born prematurely weighing something like 3 pounds and was a fighter even then. He was even in the paper labeled "miracle baby".

As I said in my original post, she died after his bar mitzvah. Apparently, she was already very ill but kept saying that she would stay alive until his bar mitzvah. His bar mitzvah was December and she died in January.

So, the real Brad Pitt, if you happen to read this, you can also wish Mimi a happy birthday!

Real Life Fury

I know that all of you are expecting some kind of rant from me but no. The Fury that I refer to in this post is the upcoming movie, Fury starring Brad Pitt. I really want to see this movie because during World War II my granddaddy, Milton "Jerry" Ontell served in the tanks.

He was born in 1919 in Newark, New Jersey to immigrant parents. By the time of his Bar Mitzvah, his mother was ill and confined to a wheelchair and his parents were divorced. In a sense, he ran free around the streets of Newark with his cousin, my uncle Al Walsky.  Just like the kids in "Once Upon a Time in America" (yes, I get my history from the movies, you have a problem with that?) who ran dice and mixed with gangsters.  He even took up boxing under an assumed name - Jerry Brown.  An assumed name so the aunts whom he lived with wouldn't know what he was up to. I have no idea how many years he was in school but I do know he never finished high school if even middle school. The first time they sent him to school, the teacher sent him home and told him to come back when he could speak English. His mother tongue was Yiddish.

For some reason that I never found out, my grandfather loved horses. Maybe it was what horses represented, freedom, countryside, unconditional love, something completely out of his sphere. When the war started he of course, along with my Uncle Al and their stereotypical like in the movies Italian friend, Tony, joined up.  My grandfather joined the calvary because he wanted to be with the horses. What he didn't know was that the horses from the cavalry had turned into tanks.  According to Wikipedia, horses were still used in WWII but the cavalry became mechanized early on. He was sent to bucolic Fort Knox in Kentucky. It must have been like Dorothy landing in Oz (I love movies, I can't help it), completely foreign right down to the southern hicks.

Before he was shipped out to the European Theater, on a St. Patricks Day in March of 1942, the USO held a dance in Louisville for the soldiers.  Among the young women (and I do mean young), was a 15 year old girl named Emma LaVerne Winkles.  Have to go on a tangent here and explain to you that my grandmother, whom we call Mimi and is still going at 87, hates her name. When we were younger and we would call her Emma (not sure how we found out that was her name because everyone else called her LaVerne), she would threaten to write us out of the will.  I think its a beautiful name and for a long time I even wore a perfume named Emma from Laura Ashley (am I dating myself?)

LaVerne was born in 1926 in Louisville, Kentucky. Her parents were also divorced and she essentially had no relationship with her father although she has told us that he owned a vinegar factory.  She spent a lot of time at her Grandmother's house (who I also knew and lived to a very ripe old age) where her Aunt Bernice also lived. I think Mimi would argue that her grandmother really raised her while her mother was trying to make her way in a world that wasn't exactly overly friendly to divorced single mothers.

On the ceiling of the gym where the St. Patrick's day dance was there were shamrocks hanging with the names of the young women of the dance.  Back down on the floor, there were also shamrocks with their names in a bowl where the men would choose a name who would then become their dance partner.  Apparently, my grandfather, who was for certain impulsive, took the shamrock from the ceiling with Laverne Winkles written on it make sure that she became his dance partner.

After that, it was a whirlwind 2 - 3 week courtship. He showed up the their first date - stone cold drunk. They must have had better dates because on April 3, they were married. There was no wedding night since my grandfather returned to Ft. Knox and was shipped off either the same day or the next one.  Somewhere along the way, my grandmother must have also revealed to my grandaddy that she wasn't 18 years old. In fact, she was only 15. In the end, it didn't really matter.

He went to war, first to Ireland where he complained that all they had to eat was mutton and then to North Africa to fight against Rommel.  Mimi meanwhile, planted a victory garden, went to school and worked at the Woolworth lunch counter. They wrote steamy letters back and forth that used the word "swell" alot. Eventually, one of the girls in Mimi's all girls high school (the same school that my mother, me and both of my siblings would graduate from) told the principal that Mimi was married. They kicked her out of school so she wouldn't be a bad influence on the other girls, teaching them all about sex even though she still hadn't had a wedding night.

Some time in early 1943 or late 1942, a telegram was received reporting that Milton Ontell was missing in action. LaVerne thought it was important to go and visit my grandfather's aunts in Newark. Here she was, a shiksa from Kentucky, about to travel a long way from home for the first time in her life to visit Yiddish speaking aunts who most likely didn't even know a Christian. In fact, one time when my grandfather had holy water sprinkled on him by accident, he was taken home and scrubbed.

Gathering up her chutzpah, she went. I don't know most of the details of this visit until this happened:
My great aunt,  my grandfathers half sister and only sibling, came running up to the door screaming that Milton was home. Of course Milton is home- they answered. He's got flat feet (or something like that) and never went away, what's all the excitement? Truth was that it wasn't that Milton. It was my grandfather. He didn't know that my grandmother was there, only that he wanted to see his family and when the Italian prisoner ship he had been sent back home on docked in the area, he jumped over the side. He was sickly and thin and had to be hospitalized. He spent the rest of the war teaching sharp shooting at Ft. Knox. He earned an NCO rank and a purple heart.

My mother was born in 1944 and was an only child.  Mimi and Grandaddy were married for 42 years and he died way too young at 65. Their life together wasn't easy. Their individual childhoods were rough and lonely. Neither of them even finished high school. They tried the best they could and by the time their 3 grandchildren had arrived, they had both mellowed and thought we we hung the stars and the moon.

Every Friday night, we would eat Shabbat dinner at their house. I had once done a living history project with Mimi and interviewed her about life during WWII. Grandaddy never spoke about it. One Friday night, while we were eating, he began to tell us the story of when his tank blew up. We'd seen the scars on his chest and stomach but never knew more than that. There were 3 of them in the tank, he said. 2 Jews and an anti-Semitic commander. One up in the turret, the other two down in the belly of the tank. There was intense fighting and my grandfather, who I think was the driver, told the captain or whatever to bring down the gunner in the turret. Not long after that, there was an explosion and the gunners head was laying in my grandfather's lap. I'm pretty sure that he was the only who survived that day and also told us that he got out of the tank and went running for shelter saying to himself "this is one Jew Hitler isn't going to get". Obviously, he was wounded and his dog tags lost which is why he had been reported missing in action.

We all sat at the table somewhat stunned. No one had ever heard any of that before.

Which brings me back to the movie Fury. It is the closest I will ever get to understanding what Grandaddy went through in the war. What experiences changed him and the violence that haunted him. Yes, it's only a movie, but for him and thousands more then and too many now, it was also real.

Robin Williams

The first time I realized that something was wrong was a school morning in the 8th grade where, I literally couldn't get out of bed.  Not that my legs didn't work, not that I was tired. I couldn't wrap my head around facing life out of the protective cocoon of my covers.  This was before prozac and before anyone acknowledged that depression wasn't just someone being sad.  I remember my  mom yelling at me to get up out of bed.  Yelling not out of frustration I realize or anger, but out of fear. I think I did eventually only to walk around the entire day in a daze as if it was me but I wasn't really there.  Like in the movies, when dead people see their own bodies.

I was listening to the news this morning to hear my sister, the news anchor on the radio on WGN and they were intensely talking about depression in reaction to the news that severe depression had caused Robin Williams to take his own life. I immediately sent her a message on what's app saying that it sounds like they were talking about my life.

They spoke about what to do if a loved one or friend seems depressed to you.  What was the right thing and the wrong thing to say.  I'm not ashamed to say that I have thought about suicide in the past when I was at an intensive low. When I was in graduate school, I thought finally I was ready to do it. In the past, it was just thoughts, but this time I actually wrote a note and even scraped my wrists with scissors. Part of me was ready but there was something still there that made me afraid. My quasi-boyfriend at the time, who would later become my husband, was out of town. So, I called my ex-boyfriend who was getting his MSW.  He talked to me, asked me all the social worky questions and moved me beyond, I think, my desire to not be in pain anymore. That is what it was. I didn't really want to die, I think that is the thing that actually kept me alive but I also didn't want to keep going. Life moved by me as if I was walking in water, slowly and out of focus. Sleep was the only thing I wanted to do.

I got help right after that episode and was put on the new drug, Prozac. I also went to therapy for a long time but the drugs, oh the drugs. I suddenly woke up. I once described feeling depressed to being down in a deep hole and looking up at the world around you. I was all alone and in the dark. But the Prozac helped lift that initial fog and allowed me to see my life in its real terms. I have taken medicine for depression every year since then and that was 1991. Except for the times when I was pregnant and nursing, when my body's chemistry was altered, I have depended on it to literally keep me alive. Early on, when my dosage had to be raised, I felt, wow, I'm really crazy. I wasn't and I'm not but I felt the stigma of depression.

I have been lucky, like Robin Williams, to have a loving family and fantastic kids and an incredibly supportive husband. The demons are still there. Almost two years ago, they began creeping back uninvited but nevertheless there. It was as if I was slowly just beginning to drop out of life. Again, I added a new medicine to my repertoire and it has helped me regain my balance. Just as my parents before me, I have passed on this disease to my children and have watched them deal with it as my mother watched me all those years ago. With fear and, at least in my case, some self loathing.  

Robin Williams lost his battle with depression and even though pundits are right, that we still have all the joy and comedy he gave us, we know inside he was in pain. We lost also, according to his friends, a very kind and gentle soul. I'm heartened by the outpouring of information about depression in reaction to his death. I hope it will make a difference. In the meantime, I and millions of others will continue to soldier on.

Nanu. Nanu.